The Morality Play: Ancestor of Elizabethan Drama?

The Morality Play: Ancestor of Elizabethan Drama? John Wasson At least since A. P. Rossiter’s edition of Woodstock in 1946 and Tillyard’s Shakespeare’s History Plays in 1947, critics have become accustomed to suppose that the Elizabethan history play had its “roots” in the medieval morality. Once that opinion was accepted as a settled fact, as it was by die time Ribner published The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare, other scholars felt free to find morality roots for Elizabethan tragedy and comedy as well.l Thus in one view or another, virtually every Renaissance play was thought to exhibit direct and im­ portant influence by the moralities. The notion has not dimin­ ished much, and today the standard view seems to be that expressed by David Bevington: Shakespeare’s acting company, too, was a direct descendant of those troupes that had acted morality plays all across Tudor England. The morality play thus became the chief dramatic link between the medieval stage and the Shakespearean.2 One would need courage, or perhaps more accurately some­ thing of Hotspur’s rashness, to question an opinion so nearly unanimously held by respected scholars. One must certainly admit that their purposes are laudable: to challenge the old assumption that Renaissance drama derived from classical models, and to find instead native English prototypes for it. And where among medieval plays can one find any which more closely resemble Renaissance drama than the moralities? Only two considerations could have led me to suggest that it may be time to rethink this opinion: a desire to find among medieval plays more satisfactory ancestors for Renaissance drama, and an unavoidable recognition that morality plays were never part of the mainstream of medieval drama. 210 John Wasson 211 It was perhaps understandable that the first type of Renais­ sance plays to be connected with the moralities were the histories. These had no classical analogues and thus must have been of indigenous origin. And there were a few early Tudor plays such as Bale’s King Johan and Skelton’s Magnificence which seemed to represent a transitional stage between moralities and histories. The connection may, however, be more apparent than real. What we can safely do, I think, is see such plays as transi­ tional between moralities and both court and school drama. Court drama was largely concerned with political ends, and the allegorical method of the moralities was suited to such ends, as well as a safer way of discussing them than the method of historical exampla chosen by the later history playwrights. And school drama, naturally concerned with instruction of youth, could profitably employ a didactic form which left no doubt about its message. But it is difficult to see clear morality char­ acteristics in the professional history plays of the Renaissance. Although they may employ a bad counsellor and a good coun­ sellor, not one of those plays follows the formula of moralities— a “mankind” figure being threatened or deserted by inimical forces and then saved by repentance and the intercession of the church. Even the history play which comes closest to such a formula, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, seems to owe much more to Robert the Devil than it does to Everyman, emphasizing as it does the unexpected conversion and subsequent greatness of a hero who had shown little promise at the begin­ ning of his career. More typical history plays, such as Lodge’s The Wounds of Civil War or Heywood’s Edward IV, have even less in common with moralities. But scholars have persisted in finding parallels which might indicate possible influence, and then assuming that the influence exists.3 We seem to have come to the point, in short, at which a history play not showing morality roots is regarded as deficient, even if on other counts it may contain greatness. Tillyard was disappointed with Shakespeare’s Henry V because it failed to fulfill his image of respublicaA In his brilliant book, From Mankind to Marlowe, Bevington gave only ten pages to Edward II because it did not exhibit morality characteristics, even though that play best ex­ emplifies the traditions of alternation, doubling, and sup...